Hi guys, Id just thought I'd mention this, having just bought myself a 55plate skoda fabia, I thought I'd do a few little jobs on it before I put it on the road at the end of the month. As there was a trim parts missing I thought I'd get them cheaply of ebay. I had them in watching and was going to buy them when I just thought I phone my local skoda dealership for prices. I was socked to find the prices for genuine parts were less than half the price than buying them off ebay. So a word to the wise, ebay is not always the cheapest. Get a quote off your dealership first. 

Oh yes, I agree with you there, and I've told a few people that!  Ebay comes into its own where genuine, in this case, VW Group service parts are being sold off a NOS due to a change of packaging style, so do tend to be cheaper, also many main dealer's parts department have someone running an ebay outlet quietly giving good discount, again mainly for fast moving parts like service items.

 

Another good thing about ebay is when buying discontinued parts or items where no normal main street trader can be bothered holding on to old stocks of slow moving things.

 

I bought an upgrade kit for a 2000 B5 VW Passat once from an ebay trader and paid more for it it turned out, but in that case, I was not aware of that kit ever being offered for sale - so most ended up on ebay although once you found out that it did exist, you could have requested that your local VW dealer's parts department got it in for you, I'd suspect that most of the kits sold in UK were sourced via ebay as VW did not bother to enlighten anyone of its existence - so once again ebay initially came up trumps.

I find that I can get an approximate idea of dealership prices by putting the part number I'm after into the search box here:

https://www.allcarpartsfast.co.uk

 

It's not a dealership, but I think the RRPs they quote are probably the current ETKA prices.

 

Edited 17 April, 20197 yr by Wino